So. that drive I mentioned last night, with all the ripped DVDs, it’s officially a paper-weight. It’s dead. I tried a bunch of recovery utilities, nothing worked, it’s not coming back.

I don’t tend to care about “things,” but stuff related to the computer is always a little different. This stuff in particular has a lot of memories attached, I ripped half of those movies when I was in the hospital for two months, after I choked on the pineapple juice and died for a little bit. I had a lot of time on my hands, so I had all my DVDs brought in and I’d just rip a few every day until the 200+ were finished. Yes, I owned them, no piracy at that point. I ripped them on a MacBook Pro that Steve Jobs gave me just a few weeks before I ended up where I ended up. I was supposed to receive some award and give a presentation at ATIA, this big assistive technology conference in Orlando, I e-mailed Jobs about it, said that I wanted to show Macs as THE platform for assistive technology and I wanted to do so on a “bleeding edge machine.” He agreed with me and in two days, I had the best MacBook Pro available at the time. I definitely meant everything I wrote, I wanted to give a spectacular presentation, but also, and mostly, I wanted to impress Sara, my then girlfriend. I liked showing her that I could take all my crazy ideas and make them real. Anyway, the ripped DVDs, I’d watch them at night with Sara, or when I was too scared to fall asleep alone, waiting for the drugs that would make me sleep.

I’d had those files for so long, and they’re gone because I wasn’t paying attention for just a few minutes. It’s not like I can’t get all those movies back eventually, but they won’t be the same movies that I watched with Sara, with other people I love, people who are gone.